Cláudia Nunes dos Santos (iBET) and Claudia Bank (IGC) were both awarded with ERC Starting Grants to develop their research programmes in nutrition and dementia prevention, and on how populations adapt and diversify.
Two researchers from two research institutes located at Oeiras were awarded with ERC Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) with a total amount of more than 2,8 million euros.
The researchers awarded are Cláudia Nunes dos Santos from the Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (iBET), affiliated both at iBET and ITQB NOVA, and Claudia Bank from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). Each lab headed by these researchers will receive between 1,3 and 1,5 million euros for a period of 5 years.
There are three more awarded researchers in Portugal, two from Social Sciences and Humanities, and one from Physics Sciences and Engineer. They are Jorge Almeida, from University of Coimbra, Joana Freitas, from University of Lisbon, and Rogério Pirraco, from University of Minho.
ABOUT THE RESEARCHERS
Cláudia Nunes dos Santos, researcher at the Food & Health Division from the Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (iBET), affiliated both at iBET and ITQB NOVA, will receive an amount of 1,5 million euros to investigate the relation between the diet and neurodegenerative diseases prevention.
The population aging imposes an ever-growing preoccupation to prevent and retard neurodegenerative diseases, namely Parkinson and Alzheimer. Even though the epidemiologic and nutrition studies indicate that fruits and vegetables consumption, rich in polyphenols, is beneficial to our health, it is still not clear how these compounds reach and act in the brain. The work that the iBET/ITQB NOVA’s researcher will develop aims to identify which of these phenolic compounds may be able to create an effective strategy to prevent dementia, understanding which are the mechanisms undergoing at the cellular and molecular level.
The studies will enable, above all, to verify the effect of polyphenols in preventing and treating neuroinflamation, a common biologic process in all neurodegenerative diseases. To do so, particular metabolites coming from phenolic compounds through the diet, which are able to cross the hematoencephalic barrier and reach the brain, will be identified. The effect of these metabolites in microglia cells – innate immune cells from the central nervous system – will be analysed afterwards in an isolated way or in communication with other cells of the brain. At last, to obtain an integrated overview, nutrition tests will be employed in mice.
Cláudia Nunes dos Santos says, “a common feature of neurodegenerative diseases is the brain inflammation and in the last years we have been able to understand that some compounds obtained through the diet can act in this process reducing the inflammation”. Moreover, the researcher adds “the contribution of nutrition to prevent neurodegenerative diseases is a very promising field and it is my intention with this ERC award, during the following five years, to develop an effective strategy of long-term care based in polyphenols to maintain the brain healthy.”
Claudia Bank, group leader of the Evolutionary Dynamics laboratory at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), was awarded with 1,37 million euros to investigate how the populations adapt and diversify.
A major challenge in evolutionary biology is to quantify the processes and mechanisms by which populations adapt to the new environments. It is known that the effect of a mutation can be dependent on the genetic background it appears on, a phenomenon termed epistasis. To which extent epistasis constrains adaptation and speciation is controversially discussed, and resolving this question is both an empirical and theoretical challenge. Claudia Bank’s project aims to address this challenge using theoretical modelling, statistical method development, and experimental evolution. The scientific approach is based on the concept of fitness landscapes, which relates the genetic makeup of individuals to their reproductive success.
Specifically, the IGC researcher aims to quantify how drug resistance evolution is affected by epistasis, which determines the potential for predicting routes to drug resistance in pathogens.
“Since the beginning of my career in research I have been fascinated with the question of how epistasis matters during evolution. The ERC award is a dream come true since it provides me with 5 years of funding to extensively pursue this question both theoretically and experimentally”, says Claudia Bank.